This is a blog about the use of emerging technologies to boost the governance of public procurement. It used to be a blog on EU law, with a focus on free movement, public procurement and competition law issues (thus the long archive of entries about those topics). I use it to publish my thoughts and to test some ideas. All comments are personal and in no way bind any of the institutions to which I am affiliated and, particularly, the University of Bristol Law School. I hope to spur discussion and look forward to your feedback and participation.

There seems to be a clear trend of increased protection of ‘corporate human
rights’ and, more specifically, due process rights (or procedural fairness) in
the field of enforcement of competition law. To a large extent, that trend is
based on the uncritical extension of human rights protection to corporate
defendants by a process of simple assimilation of corporate and individual
defendants.

This new coauthored paper briefly explores the rationale behind the creation of due
process rights when the individual is the beneficiary of such protection. It
then goes on to critically assess if the same need exists for the extension of
those protections to corporate defendants, particularly in the field of
competition law or antitrust enforcement. It concludes with some warnings
concerning the diminishing effectiveness of competition law prohibitions and of
human law protection that can result from an overstretched conception of due
process protection in this area of EU economic law.

From a substantive
perspective, this paper submits that the extension of human rights to
corporations cannot be uncritical and should not be completely symmetrical to
that for human beings; but that it rather needs to be necessarily adapted to
their circumstances. To put it more bluntly, it is suggested that in the field
of the enforcement of economic law, administrative law procedures should be
sound and there should clearly be a strong system of judicial review in place,
but corporations should not have access to broader constitutional or human
rights protections and any perceived shortcomings in the design and application
of those procedures should remain within the sphere of regulatory reform.

Sánchez Graells, Albert and Marcos, Francisco, “Human Rights” Protection for
Corporate Antitrust Defendants: Are We Not Going Overboard? (February 2, 2014).
University of Leicester School of Law Research Paper No. 14-04. Available at
SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2389715.